BUSINESS AND TECH NEWS

Nearly twice as many people are now paying for Spotify

Competition from the streaming likes of Apple Music hasn't hurt Spotify's ability to attract new users, as the Swedish firm reveals it increased its subscriber base to 140 million in 2016.

That marks a major influx of 40 million fresh listeners around the world.

In terms of those not willing to put up with ad interruptions, the number of people paying for the service nearly doubled to 48 million.

This growth pushed the group’s revenues 52% higher during the period to $3.3 billion (€2.95bn).

According to Forbes, that figure is almost half of all streaming music revenue in the world, which climbed to $7.6bn (€6.8bn) in 2016.

Despite this market domination and the service's ever-soaring popularity, Spotify continues to record big losses.

In fact, a figure of $601.4m (€539m) represented its biggest loss yet and marked a 133% increase on 2015's losses of just under $258m (€230.9m).

Spotify is strongly considering becoming a publicly-quoted company but may decide simply to list directly on a stock market and bypass the normal IPO process where new capital is raised from larger institutional shareholders.

Goldman Sachs recently released a research note which forecasts that revenues generated by music streaming companies will double between now and 2030 – rising to annual revenues of $104bn.